"Let me be permitted to indulge my grief, and to give a free course to
my tears! Eliza was my friend. Reader, whosoe'er thou art, forgive me
this involuntary motion;--let my mind dwell upon Eliza. If I have
sometimes moved thee to compassionate the calamities of the human
race, let me now prevail upon thee to commiserate my own misfortune. I
was thy friend without knowing thee; be for a moment mine. Thy gentle
pity shall be my reward.

"Eliza ended her days in the land of her forefathers, at the age of
three-and-thirty. A celestial soul was separated from a heavenly body.
Ye who visit the spot on which her sacred ashes rest, write upon the
marble that covers them: In such a year, in such a month, on such a
day, at such an hour, God withdrew his spirit, and Eliza died.

"And thou, _original writer_, her admirer and her friend, it was Eliza
who inspired _thy works_, and dictated to thee the most affecting
pages of them. _Fortunate Sterne, thou art no more_, and I am left
behind. I wept _over thee with Eliza_; thou wouldst weep over her with
me: and had it been the will of Heaven, that you had both survived me,
your tears would have fallen together upon my grave.

"The men were used to say, that no woman had so many graces as Eliza:
the women said so too. They all praised her candour; they all extolled
her sensibility; they were all ambitious of the honour of her
acquaintance. The stings of envy were never pointed against
unconscious merit.

"Anjengo, it is to the influence of thy happy climate that she
certainly was indebted for that almost incompatible harmony of
voluptuousness and decency which diffused itself over all her person,